Category Archives: Bee Biology
How Honey Bees Discovered Vaccines
Last week, the popular press was claiming that honey bees discovered vaccines millions of years before humans did. It makes great lead paragraphs for news stories, but the tale is slightly off the mark. Honey bees don’t have scientists. They … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Diseases and Pests
Tagged AFB, American Foulbrood, honey bees, immunization, vaccines, vitellogenin
3 Comments
Uncommon Ancestory
Creatures change with time. You might believe that God controls, guides, or designs those changes or you may have the opinion that random acts in the environment create mutations which change a species. The former idea is accepted by the … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Genetics, Science
Tagged bumblebees, common ancestry, DNA, evolution, honey bees
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Plight of the Bumblebees
Forty years ago, near Florida’s Ocala National Forest, I took the photos seen in today’s blog. This is a bumblebee nest, accidentally uncovered and exposed on the forest floor, in the winter of 1974 in central Florida. You can see … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Climate, Ecology, Save the Bees
Tagged bumblebee, bumblebees, climate change, Florida, habitat loss, migration
4 Comments
Mother’s Day at the Hive
Biologists have been debating the role that mixed genetic heritage plays in your beehive. As children, we learned that there are three castes of honey bees – queen, workers, and drones. [That’s wrong – it’s two castes (queen/worker) and two … Continue reading
Honey Bee Sauna: “Keeps Bees from Roaring”
A German “crowd sourcing” fund wanted 10,000 Euros to build honey bee saunas. Within a few weeks, they had over 60,000 Euros in pledges – that’s about $75,000. I guess that the contributors don’t realize bees can die in a … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Diseases and Pests, Genetics, Tools and Gadgets
Tagged Bee Sauna, crowd-funding, hive temperature, Mite Zapper, Russian bee, varroa mites
17 Comments
Sterile Radioactive Bugs Arrive in Croatia
Why did a kibbutz in Israel ship 380 million sterile, radioactive fruit flies to Croatia? That might be the most unusual introduction this blog has ever used. Here’s the backstory… Ceratitis capitata – the lovely but insidious Mediterranean Fruit … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Ecology, Pesticides, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged BioBee, citrus, Croatia, Israel, medfly, Neretva Delta, radioactive fruit flies
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Glow-in-the-dark bees
Finally! Glow-in-the-dark honey bees! We’ve all been waiting for these glow bugs to complement our glow-in-the-dark radium-painted wristwatches and glow-in-the-dark jelly bean collections. Now you can have the complete set of things you probably didn’t know existed. Researchers at Germany’s … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Culture, or lack thereof, Humour, Queens, Strange, Odd Stuff
Tagged bee genome, Christina Schulte
4 Comments
Wild bees again
A few days ago, I wrote a snarky blog entry about one researcher’s efforts to alert us to a hazard of urban beekeeping. It is Dr Cartar’s contention that keeping bees in an urban environment robs wild native bees of … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Ecology, Science
Tagged habitat loss, Native Bees, Ralph Cartar, urban beekeeping
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Going native
A Calgary University professor has this to say about urban beekeepers: “It is not as rosy as they think. Every jewel* of honey that they get on their plate or in their jars is a jewel that has been robbed … Continue reading
Posted in Bee Biology, Beekeeping, Culture, or lack thereof, Ecology
Tagged invasive species, Native Bees, Ralph Cartar, urban beekeeping, Xerces Society
2 Comments
What we don’t know
Sometimes I am surprised by what we don’t know about bees. You would think we’d have it all figured out by now. I’m not talking about knowing when to wrap or unwrap hives; start grafting queen cells; split hives; or … Continue reading
Bad Beekeeping Blog 